General Motors Set To Announce Major Investment For Warren Tech Center
General Motors is expected to announce Thursday its plans for the Warren Tech Center, including its proposed $1-billion investment into the facility.
Both Warren, Mich. city officials and inside sources have stated GM could invest up to $1 billion throughout the entire campus, The Detroit News reports. The proposed investment would follow the $139.5-million investment made to the Tech Center last month for a new body shop and improvements to the stamping plant at the facility’s Pre-Production Operations wing, part of the automaker’s overall $5.4-billion investment plan for its plants in the United States.
According to GM’s tax abatement application to the Warren City Council, the automaker is considering putting $419.4 million into expansion and renovation of the Tech Center, including $180 million for the design studio, a total of $117.7 million for a yet-to-be-determined building and unidentified parking, and $20 million for renovation and expansion of the center’s Advanced Engineering Center lab. The overall project would retain 3,800 employees and add 2,600 more in engineering, IT, R&D and other categories over the years.
Though details surrounding the announcement are scant, representatives have stated the 50-percent tax abatement approval — meant to save GM $97 million in property taxes over the next decade and beyond — was key to getting the project off the ground.
[Photo credit: Local hero/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0]
Seattle-based writer, blogger, and photographer for many a publication. Born in Louisville. Raised in Kansas. Where I lay my head is home.
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"A billion dollars? I could make that much money in five seconds!"
And if they don't get the tax abatement, where else would they build R&D facilities? On balance, Warren probably benefits, the developments don't increase the city's costs significantly, but while I'm not fond of taxes in general I'm getting more and more skeptical about tax abatements, relief and subsidies for big businesses. Will Warren extend the same courtesies to me if I want to start making guitar straps in their city? My late uncle, Norman Leemon, was a mortgage banker, a moderately wealthy man and a staunch Democrat (he even ran for the U.S. House once in a primary) and he told me that if you have to consider tax implications in a business deal, it's probably not a good deal, that a business deal should be profitable on its own.
The building with the flags is built on the former pond. We used to skate on it in the winter, fed the ducks and geese in the summer. The pond was the water supply for fire fighting in the '50s and '60s. Further to the right was where you could hit golf balls and retrieve them; only irons. If the guards saw you with a wood, you had to bag it. Where I learned to hit 2 and 3 irons without fear. You could just drive into the Tech Center back then, nobody cared because nobody did any criminal stuff. The old man did 32 years there at Fisher Body.